The incredible thing about football is I never get bored of it* When I try and work out why that is, one thing that comes to mind is the seemingly infinite amount of ways there are to score a goal. Some goals are beautiful, crafted works of art. I think my favourite goal of all, the one I'd like to relive most is the one from the Cardiff play off final where we pinged it across the pitch in a sweeping move and you just knew it was going to result in a goal at the end and when it did, the roar was the culmination of something that had built up from the first moment of the move, a collective sense that what we all envisaged, from the players on the pitch to the person in the highest row of the stand, had come to a glorious fruition.
*I am aware I wrote 2000 words about how bored of football I was literally last week but let's not sweat the details eh? Do you want me to come round and point out your contradictions? No. People are contradictory. That's what defines us as a species. Too fucking flighty by half us. Don't get this problem with dogs or swans or otters or carp or plankton or spiders or coral sponges (etc. think of your own animals now, I'm not doing all the heavy lifting)
I've seen many goals. I've seen piledrivers, tap ins, far post headers, diving headers, daisy cutters, scrambled efforts, near post flicks, mishits, volleys, half volleys, clinical bottom corners efforts, keepers drawn, keepers chipped, the ball put through keeper's legs, goalies misjudging things, the ball literally going off a striker's backside, backheels, twenty pass team goals, one man solo goals and that doesn't really tell anything like the first chapter of the whole story. Goals are the point. All goals are great goals but Gary goals are the greatest goals of all, especially when they're against PNE and him and Jerry play like the Rotherham Messi and the Gateshead Maradona for 10 seconds and we score and beat them and the whole ground is ecstatic and you feel like you'd quite like to die now because this must be the feeling you get if heaven is a thing and it would be great to never come down from that moment...
A goal is the moment of joy or the punch in the gut. It's lift, a blow, a hope, a nail in the coffin, a triumph, a disaster, a well crafted move, a piece of instinct, a training ground special, a shambles, a cutting open, a parting of the waves, an unstoppable rocket, a dribbling embarrassment of a pearoller and all of the rest.
You get the picture. I'm in the mood for listing things today and list things I will... at the end of the day Clive, it's a funny old game Saint cos all of these things, they're all different, but yet, they're all the same. Every goal counts as '1' and add to the score for the team who are attacking the goal whose sacred line the ball passes over.
It's that that we love isn't it? That all of this, all of the billions of pounds of general hoopla and hype in a media landscape containing entire empires propped up by their sports coverage, the vast, sprawling and ever expanding 'football industry' and all that entails, even Jim Ratcliffe, sweating away whilst Gary Neville grills him (at times seeming decidedly Owen Oystony with his promises of mega stadia for a club that are also apparently skint and his talk of 'being a fan and wanting the same thing as the fans') with millions dissecting his words around the globe... all of this and a thousand thousand thousand more off pitch things all hinge on the simple and universally understandable idea that getting the ball between the posts, under the bar and over the line equals exactly 1 goal and they who do it most in the time scale of 90 minutes wins the game. End of. Simple. Don't pick up the ball and don't be offside. That's more or less it.
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Imagine then, my surprise when, after 38 years of (at times worryingly) ardent football consumption (the first game I recall is the 1987 FA Cup final, when Keith Houchen scored that diving header, shaping a lifelong adoration of that particular noble art) I saw, after a mere 3 minutes of this hirthto unremarkable seeming occasion, a goal I'd never seen before. A goal, so stunning in its originality, it left me almost speechless, incredulous. How to describe it? I'm not sure I can.
Picture this. We'd played really well at Barnsley and seemed confident, effective, powerful, dominant. Imagine then, a well oiled machine. Let's say it's a tank. The tank is rolling along, firing its gun, destroying all in its path, crushing things, rolling up and over rugged terrain, a powerful yet lean force perfectly attuned to its purpose.
Now imagine some silent comedy music begins to play. The kind of thing you'd get on a Charlie Chaplin film. Bits start to fall off the tank and gradually reveal that it's being driven by a clown. The gun, the armour, the tracks, everything drop away with a clanking noise, leaving just a clown sat in a seat in the mud with nothing to defend himself but a water pistol and when he tries to fire the water pistol, all that happens is a a tepid dribble of fetid and rusty looking water that stains his green clown shirt, and the water pistol breaks in two, the chair collapses and the clown is left sitting in the mud looking really, really foolish.
That in essence is that goal. Everything from Saturday in the bin. It has possession given away for no reason at all. It has air kicks. It has a former player scoring, even though his effort is a bit shit. It has a a doomed attempt at heroically rescuing the situation. It has the fact it probably didn't even go in anyway but it counts.
That goal counts as much as any goal ever - As much as (for example) as the aforementioned argentinian's genius goal in 1986 counted - not the handball one, the one that went "....Maradona, turns like a little eel. He comes away from trouble, little squat man, comes inside Butcher and leaves him for dead, outside Fenwick and leaves him for dead, and puts the ball away... and that... is why he's the greatest player in the world" - a goal where Bryan Butler's stunning commentary is almost as good as the football itself. I've not heard the commentary for this, but I imagine it went "Coulson, Carey and Morgan are options, he's... what's he done? Ballard, Pennington on the cover... he's.... back... no... who? what has happened there? He's I think... he's given it. How has that happened?"which isn't exactly poetry.
I literally can't help but laugh. It's a fucking calamity. What is this club? We pretty much score goals for the other team for fuck sake...
Then there's the other end of the scale.
I love Sonny. I really do. From the moment I watched his preseason debut 3 years back I thought 'he's got something' - and whilst others saw him drifting out of games, I saw him looking for space. When other said 'he needs to learn to tackle - I thought 'that's not the point of him' 'When Critchley turned him into a routine pass and move link player, I felt a bit like when your favourite band put out a really bland record you want to like, but don't. I tried to get behind it, but it just didn't seem to be, well, fun... I don't claim to be any kind of authority on what makes an effective footballer (target men aside, I'm a world expert on them), but I know the kind I like to watch and I like watching Sonny. The waif like kid is now a strapping lad, his pale skin and ginger beard reminds me of some kind of US sportstar, a baseball player perhaps. The Sonny of recent weeks is the Sonny I've always seen underneath it all and thank fuck Steve Bruce noticed something along the same lines as me, because if this boy had been broken on the wheel of systems football and sensible ball retention then I'd have been heartbroken because no one, but no one as a kid dreams of their ball retention stats and I love watching footballers have moments that live up to their dreams because fuck me, they work hard to get on to the stage, let alone have a moment where they can take a bow for their efforts ... and what's more we'd never have had the following. because the broken Sonny would never have dared...
Carey picks it up, he's balanced, he's turned, I always like it when he receives the ball facing goal and, yes, he goes forward, driving into deep into their half, a shimmy, a change of pace, he's like an express train of the 1930s when he runs, pistons drumming, swaying with the raw intensity of his effort, it's not so much that he's fast, that he's just charging at his limits and that's thrilling, now he's just drifted as if the points have changed, he's shrugged off one man and the cover is scrambling, he's driving for the box but he's unleashed it, early, unexpected by the keeper, a cutter with pace, it bounces, it jumps, it finds the corner and I explode! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! SONNY FUCKING CAREY!!!!!!!!!!! ON HIS OWN!!! WHAT A FUCKING GOAL!!!!
The Kop chants his name. He leaps, he punches the air. He lands. What a thing confidence is. Tfe lad looks like he's got a yard of extra pace from nowhere and found something he'd almost forgotten that he'd lost, the simple joy of the game and being appreciated for who he is and what he's good at.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Steve Bruce - a man who understands both football and footballers. A strangely rare quality amongst football managers it sometimes seems.
Talking of that, there's another goal - this lies somewhere in between Sonny's moment of beauty and the shambles at the start. It's nicely crafted, but more routine. Odel Offiah is a lovely player and his run on the right is brave, it's powerful, it's admirable in that he doesn't go to ground when he might and daring in that he runs it right to the byline, the ball kissing the lime paint as he pulls it back - and there is the one and only Ashley Goals to tap it home, a more simple finish couldn't be imagined but then again, a few months ago, Super Ashley Fletcher (there ain't nobody better) seemed to specialise in making the basics look like impossibly difficult feats, like clipping his toenails was brain surgery. His finishing was the attacking equivalent of our defending for the first goal but no more...
Again, here is a footballer thriving. A player who has now scored and assisted more in less minutes, than the much loved Kyle Joseph who many (me included) thought we were mad to sell with only Fletcher really to replace him - a player who is playing the best football he's played in half a decade. A player who looked fed up, frightened perhaps, diffident and really, a bit of a sad figure, who was turned around by a manager who showed him something he needed - a bit of a mix of a kick up the bum and a hug. This is a footballer now who has regained his career and again, seems to possess a sense of joy. He smiles, he's a team player, he talks eloquently and intelligently about his game. He's a classic Blackpool redemption story and another Bruce has relit a fire in and maybe one that burns brighter than it as ever has as a result.
Albie Morgan. If we're talking positives (and this week, I seem to be) what a player this boy is becoming. He's found a consistency he never possessed before. He's running miles every week. He's a grafter, he's a craftsman, he's a purveyor of glorious first time passes, he's a runner, a dribbler, he's escaping up the wing, tricking his way past two, he's scrapping for it and laying off the simple pass. He's wonderful. There's no other way I can describe this kid. Perfect? No. But fuck perfect. Fuck perfect and leave that to dickheads who think supporting a football team is watching Sky and talking shit about 'top 10 players all time' - Albie is more my type than Messi - he's grit, he's skill, he's getting better all the time and he's never giving up, no matter what life or the game chucks at him. He's my favourite dapper cockney gangster in the squad for sure.
We're in the dying seconds. We're having an absolute mare. We're not clearing it. Evans has, for no earthly reason, just poked the ball back into the box for them to have a go with. Fuck me Lee. Why? I can't watch this. The ball is too close, they've got too many men around and one is bound to be free and he is and the ball is with him and....
ALBIE!!!
I actually shout this out loud in sheer astonishment and relief. Morgan has chucked himself, full length, Keogh style and blocked a shot about two yards from him. That must hurt. He doesn't care. He gets up, muddied and focussed, he turns to face play as ever, the ball is hacked away. They're done. We will win. That's why we all love Albie Morgan in a nutshell. He's become that player who will do what is needed, not just what he does best. I love Sonny to bits, I love Robbie Apter (who tonight I notice looks more like a subbuteo player than any footballer I've ever seen) to bits too, I still love Sullay Kaikai who I have to remember isn't playing for us therefore I have to want to do badly but secretly hope does something pretty good but not too good, like hit the post after a great run or somesuch.
I love the impractical, the impulsive, the attacking - but I also love a last ditch tackle from a player who must be dead on his feet and I love that Albie Morgan is growing into a serious footballer who turns up and gives his best self far, far more often than he doesn't.
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Overall, it wasn't a classic. We have a few nice moves. Evans stunning pass to Apter who takes it beautifully and then puts it on a string for Ennis to pounce and nod just wide, Carey sneaking in and then smashing it past the keeper who does great to get his hand back and claw away is matched up against some good work from Tyrer (another who has improved a lot over time) and a bit of late chaos. In between a few good bits there was lots of not much. We were the better side I think overall. They weren't amazing but they worked really hard, the ref was shit and they were physical and we sometimes would fall apart in those circumstances - we didn't and I'd have been annoyed to draw it - but we didn't really string much together over any great length of time and were nowhere near our best.
This is it though. Football is goals scored and conceded. They all equal the same and you have to score more than the other team. Fletch dragged us level, Sonny scored a winner, Albie saved the day and 22 lads ran around and did their best. None of them are Messi but why would you expect them to be? It wasn't even a very good game, but fuck me, football eh? I don't know why I love it so much, but I do.
It's the best thing ever.
It's amazing what a bit of weak sunshine and very unlikely, lets not even talk about it, don't get your hopes up, would be mad to even consider it to be honest, but yet, you never know, don't kid yourself, rank outside shot at a playoff place can do for your mindset isn't it?
Onward!
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